Sovereignty of God

The Interposer

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun. And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense and made an atonement for the people. – Numbers 16:46-47

As the old Westminster Annotations say upon this passage, “The plague was moving among the people as the fire moves along a field of corn.” There it came, it began in the extremity, the faces of men grew pale, and swiftly on, on it came, and in vast heaps they fell till some fourteen thousand had been destroyed. Aaron wisely puts himself just in the pathway of the plague. It came on, cutting down all before it, and there stood Aaron the interposer with arms outstretched and censer swinging towards heaven, interposing himself between the darts of death and the people. “If there be darts that must fly,” he seemed to say, “let them pierce me, or let the incense shield both me and the people. Death,” saith he, “are you coming on your pale horse? I arrest you, I throw back your steed upon his haunches. Are you coming, you skeleton king? With my censer in my hand I stand before you, you must march over my body, you must empty my censer, you must destroy God’s high priest, ere you can destroy this people.”

Just so was it with Christ. Wrath had gone out against us. The law was about to smite us, the whole human race must be destroyed. Christ stands in the forefront of the battle. “The stripes must fall on Me,” He cries, “the arrows shall find a target in My breast. On Me, JEHOVAH, let Your vengeance fall.” And He receives that vengeance, and afterwards up-springing from the grave He waves the censer full of the merit of His blood, and bids this wrath and fury stand back. On which side are you today, sinner? Is God angry with you, sinner? Are your sins unforgiven? Say, are you unpardoned? Are you abiding still an heir of wrath and an inheritor of death? Ah! then would that you were on the other side of Christ. Ah, brothers and sisters, if you have put between you and God, baptisms and communions, fastings, prayers, tears and vows, JEHOVAH shall break through your refuges as the fire devours the stubble. But if, my soul, Christ stands between you and JEHOVAH, JEHOVAH cannot smite you, His thunderbolt must first pierce through the Divine Redeemer ere it can reach you, and that can never be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

Christ Alone Saves the Sinner

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun. – Numbers 16:46

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4:10

You who know not Christ, hear this! You are lost and ruined by the fall. Wrath is gone out from God against you. That wrath will consume you to the lowest hell, unless some one can propitiate God on your behalf. You cannot do it. No man can do it, no prayers of yours, no sacraments, nay, though you could sweat a bloody sweat, it would not avail, but Christ is able to make propitiation. He can do it, and He alone, He can stand between you and God, and turn away JEHOVAH’s wrath, and He can put into your heart a sense of His love.

Oh, I pray you, trust Him, trust Him. You may not be ready for Him, but He is always ready to save, and indeed I must correct myself in that last sentence, you are ready for Him. If you be never so vile, and never so ruined by your sin, their needs no preparation and no readiness. It was not the merit of the people that saved them, nor any preparation on their part, it was the preparedness of the high priest that saved them.

Trust Him, and you shall not find need for delay. Rely upon Him, and you shall not find that He has to go a day’s journey to save you, “He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” He is prepared. He stands on the behalf of those who believe on Him. Would that you would now believe on Him and trust your soul in His hands, and oh, believe me, your sins which are many shall be all forgiven, the plague shall be stayed, nor shall God’s wrath go out against you, but you shall be saved. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Propitiator

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And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense and made an atonement for the people. – Numbers 16:47

Wrath had gone out from God against the people on account of their sin, and it is God’s law that His wrath shall never stay unless a propitiation is offered. The incense which Aaron carried in his hand was the propitiation before God, from the fact that God saw in that perfume the type of that richer offering which our Great High Priest is this very day offering before the throne.

Aaron as the propitiator is to be looked at first as bearing in his censer that which was necessary for the propitiation. He did not come empty-handed. (As) God’s high priest, he must take the censer, he must fill it with the ordained incense, made with the ordained materials, and then he must light it with the sacred fire from off the altar, and with that alone. With the censer in his hand he is safe, without it Aaron might have died as well as the rest of the people. The qualification of Aaron partly lay in the fact that he had the censer, and that that censer was full of sweet odors which were acceptable to God.

Behold then, Christ Jesus as the propitiator for His people. He stands this day before God with His censer smoking up towards heaven. Behold the Great High Priest! See Him this day with His pierced hands, and head that once was crowned with thorns. Mark how the marvelous smoke of His merits goes up forever and ever before the eternal throne. ’Tis He, ’tis He alone who puts away the sins of His people. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

He Cheerfully and Joyfully Laid Down His Life

Sherry salvation, Character of Jesus, Attributes of God, promises, The Father, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation… – Numbers 16:47

Aaron as a lover of the people of Israel deserves much commendation, from the fact that it is expressly said, he ran into the host. I am not just now sure about Aaron’s age, but being older than Moses, who must have been at this time about ninety years of age, Aaron must have been more than a hundred, and probably, a hundred and twenty or more.

It is no little thing to say that such a man, clad no doubt in his priestly robes, ran, and that for a people who had never shown any activity to do him service, but much zeal in opposing his authority. That little fact of his running is highly significant, for it shows the greatness and swiftness of the divine impulse of love that was within.

Ah! and was it not so with Christ? Did He not haste to be our Savior? Were not His delights with the sons of men? Did He not often say, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” His dying for us was not a thing which He dreaded. “With desire have I desired to eat this passover.”

He had panted for the moment when He should redeem His people. He had looked forward through eternity for that hour when He should glorify His Father, and His Father might glorify Him. He came voluntarily, bound by no constraint, except His own covenant engagements, and He cheerfully and joyfully laid down His life—a life which no man could take from Him, but which He laid down of Himself. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Plague Slew Him

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And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun. And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense and made an atonement for the people. – Numbers 16:46-47

You will see the love and kindness of Aaron, if you look again. Aaron might have said, “But the Lord will surely destroy me also with the people, if I go where the shafts of death are flying, they will reach me.” He never thinks of it, he exposes his own person in the very forefront of the destroying one. There comes the angel of death, smiting all before him, and here stands Aaron in his very path, as much as to say, “Get you back! Get you back! I will wave my incense in your face, destroyer of men, you cannot pass the censer of God’s high priest.”

Oh, You glorious High Priest of our profession, You might not only have feared this which Aaron might have dreaded, but You did actually endure the plague of God, for when You did come among the people to save them from JEHOVAH’s wrath, JEHOVAH’s wrath fell upon You. You were forsaken of Your Father. The plague which Jesus kept from us slew Him, “The LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” The sheep escaped, but “His life and blood the Shepherd pays, a ransom for the flock.”

Oh, You lover of Your Church, immortal honors be unto You! Aaron deserves to be beloved by the tribes of Israel, because he stood in the gap and exposed himself for their sins, but You, most mighty Savior, You shall have eternal songs, because, forgetful of Yourself, You did bleed and die, that man might be saved! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Generous Love of the Aggrieved

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But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD…And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment. And they fell upon their faces. And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun… And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. – Numbers 16:41,44-46,48

Aaron must have felt grief when he saw Korah there and the two hundred and fifty men, all of them with their censers, that the plot was against him, that they wished to strip from him his mitre, to take from him his embroidered vest, and the glittering stones that shone upon his breast, that they wished to reduce him to the position of a common Levite, and take to themselves his office and his dignity. Yet, forgetting himself, he does not say, “Let them die, I will wait awhile till they have been sufficiently smitten.” But the old man with generous love hastened into the midst of the people, though he was himself the aggrieved person.

Is not this the very picture of our sweet Lord Jesus? Had not sin dishonored Him? Was He not the Eternal God, and did not sin therefore conspire against Him as well as against the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit? Was He not, I say, the one against whom the nations of the earth stood up and said, “Let us break His bands asunder, and cast His cords from us.” Yet He, our Jesus, laying aside all thought of avenging Himself, becomes the Savior of His people.

Oh! generous Christ, forgetting the offenses which we have committed against You, and making atonement by Your own blood for sins which were perpetrated against Your own glory! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living

The Offended Ones Are the Saving Ones

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And Aaron took as Moses commanded and ran into the midst of the congregation; and behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on incense and made an atonement for the people. And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. – Numbers 16:47-48

The authority of Moses and Aaron had been disputed by an ambitious man belonging to an elder branch of the family of Levi, who had craftily joined with himself certain factious spirits of the tribe of Reuben, who themselves also sought to attain to power by their supposed rights through Reuben the first born. By a singular judgment from heaven, God had proved that rebellion against Moses was a mortal sin. He had bidden the earth open its mouth and swallow up all the traitors, and both Levites and Reubenites had disappeared, covered in a living grave. One would have imagined that from this time the murmurings of the children of Israel would have ceased…Yet…(on) the very morrow after that solemn transaction, the whole of the people of Israel gathered themselves together, and with unholy clamors surrounded Moses and Aaron, charging them with having put to death the people of the Lord.

Aaron deserves to be very highly praised for his patriotic affection for a people who were the most rebellious and stiff-necked that ever grieved the heart of a good man. You must remember that in this case he was the aggrieved party. The clamor was made against Moses and against Aaron, yet it was Moses and Aaron who interceded and saved the people. They were the offended ones yet were they the saving ones. You know who it is to whom we give that name of “Lover of my soul.” You will be able to see in Aaron the lover of Israel, in Jesus the lover of His people. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living